Psych
by AndTheStarsWillFall
Summary: After discovering a girl in the ruins of a villainous hideout, the X-Men decide to take her in for questioning. However, when she wakes up with no memory of who she is, the team decides they might need to help her instead.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Note: Hello there! For those of you reading this, this is an old story of mine from way back when. I recently rediscovered it and I decided it was worth a revisit. I apologize for any spelling or grammar errors, as I'm writing this without a Beta. Anyway, I hope you like it! Reviews of any kind are always welcome.

Disclaimer: I own nothing aside from my original character and the plot line. Everything else belongs to its respective owner. I'm merely writing this for amusement and I do not intend to profit from it.

…What was going on? Why was it dark? Was she…dead? Just as the ominous word flitted through her mind, another, almost more frightening alternative hit her; How long had she been there?

She tried to open her eyes, but her eyelids felt as though they had gained a tremendous weight and lifting them became a monumental effort. Her eyes finally flickered open a few brief times, but her mind resisted against her body due to the harsh, artificial light and they would promptly close again.

Everything in her view once her eyes finally managed to fully open was foggy at first before the definite outline of the room became clear.

"Huh…Her eyes are a pretty shade of purple." She heard a voice say.

"W-what did you say?" The girl asked, her voice groggy and weak from disuse.

"It talks!" A pause. "I didn't say anything." The same voice said in an incredulous tone. She turned and came face to face with a boy in his late teens. His blond hair lay about his head in a disheveled manner, with the bangs almost covering his ice blue eyes. Under a shock of hair, one eyebrow was raised. He stayed silent for a moment before asking, almost curiously; "What did I say?"

"You said something about my eyes?" The girl said, the comment coming out sounding more like a question than a statement. Bringing up the subject of eyes brought her attention back to them and she groaned. She closed her eyes and rubbed them, hoping that they would stop burning.

After a minute of fruitless rubbing, the girl decided that it was useless to try to massage away the pain and opened her eyes. The boy was still peering at her strangely from the stool he was sitting on by her bedside.

Cautiously, she sat up, making sure not to do so too quickly in case she was injured, and cast a glance around the white tile room.

"Where am I?" The girl asked.

"The Xavier Institute." The boy by her bedside replied.

"How long have I been out?" She inquired apprehensively.

The blond shrugged. "Two years." He answered with shocking complacency.

The girl shot up immediately, her dark purple hair flying in front of her face as she tried to jump out of her bed. The boy only chuckled, putting an arm out to push her back down lightly. "Two weeks." He amended.

That answer didn't help much in the way of calming her down. "Relax." He told her. "I'll get Emma." He then walked to the door in front of her bed and poked his head out of it and into what appeared to be a hallway. She didn't see his lips move, but she could clearly hear him shout 'EMMA!' The sound left her ears ringing and she moaned, massaging her temples.

"Why did you shout so loud? She's in the next room." The girl groaned when the boy walked back to her bedside, leaning forwards in a pained expression.

"How did you-" The boy started, and then cut himself off mid-sentence with a simple 'ah'. He smiled, a knowing expression plastered all over his face. Never mind her hearing something he hadn't said aloud and knowing where someone she had never met was in a building she had never been in before.

"You do realize that you don't have to shout?" The girl heard another voice say, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of stiletto heels against tile.

The girl opened her eyes to a woman dressed in all white. This woman, Emma, the girl surmised, was glaring the boy down with a pair of cold grey eyes. Her platinum blonde hair fell pin straight to her shoulders, which were left bare by the crop-necked cardigan she was wearing.

"Ummm…" The boy murmured, a note of fear in his voice. "This is Emma Frost…She's a telepath…She's going to read your mind." He added as if it were the most normal thing in the world. The girl blinked.

The boy turned to leave, but just as he did, he turned his head around. "I'm Robert –Bobby Drake – by the way. What's your name?"

The girl paused for a while before she felt her heart begin to race. She placed a hand on her mouth nervously. "I…I don't know."


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note: Yay! Looks like you made it to the second chapter. I don't really like the writing in this chapter and the next one, but that might be because I was in a bad mood when I was typing them up. Oh, well. Again, I hope that you enjoy it. (And sorry about my character…She's kind of derpy.)

Emma gave a restrained sigh and sat down in the stool Bobby was in before. "I can see we have a lot to work with." She murmured rubbing her hands together. The blonde closed her eyes in concentration. "Try to think of something peaceful." She instructed, placing a pale hand on either side of the young girl's head, her manicured nails just brushing against the skin at the girl's temples. "Close your eyes."

The tone of Emma's voice was confident and soothing; and the girl did exactly as she was told. However, all of Emma's confidence ebbed away once she breeched the girl's mind. It was completely black and barren. Emma knew from experience that the only way that this could have happened was if an extremely powerful telepath wiped out every thought, every precious memory, which ever existed in a person's mind.

Slightly perturbed, but still hopeful, Emma began to move through the girl's mind. Still there was nothing but empty blackness.

Suddenly, Emma felt a force knock into her. She let out a scream as she was thrown from the girl's mind. Her back hit the wall at the other end of the large room.

Three men, whom the girl had never seen before, the boy – Bobby – from earlier, and another girl, one that the raven-haired girl surmised was about the same age as Bobby, suddenly burst into the room.

"What is it Emma?" One of the men – the one in the strange red goggles – asked. The girl couldn't help but catch the note of restrained worry in his tone inflection.

"I was…" Emma paused to catch her breath. "Thrown out…" Another pause, another deep breathe. "Of her mind…"

The girl watched everyone's heads turn from Emma on one end of the room to her on the other. As the object of their collective attentions, the girl was confused.

The strange group at the door turned to each other and muttered two words at the exact same time. "Danger Room."

~x~

"This," Bobby explained, "Is the Danger Room." He swung his arms out to his sides to demonstrate just how voluminous the room was. The girl's eyes wandered around the room, inspecting the grey metal of the walls before they wound up back at Bobby's face.

"Umm…" The girl paused, staring at Bobby with curiosity. "Why are you blue?

Bobby frowned. He wasn't in the mood to explain. And after all, wasn't the answer obvious- his train of thought stopped as he remembered that the girl in front of him didn't even know her own name. 'Give her the cliff-notes version.' He thought.

"You know how the woman you met earlier could read minds?" Bobby asked.

"Emma." The girl nodded.

"Well, I can manipulate ice." The blond paused to see if the girl was still following. She nodded in understanding. "People with powers like us are called mutants."

"Am I a mutant?" The girl asked.

"That's what we're trying to find out." Bobby smiled.

"If I am, do I get to wear a cool outfit like you?" She looked down at her infirmary cloak, shifting her balance in embarrassment.

"Yep!" Bobby replied, giving the girl a confirmatory nod.

The girl smiled back, her embarrassment loosening slightly. "So…" She paused. "What are we going to do?"

"I'm going to throw this snowball at you, and you're going to try to defend yourself." He answered simply, indicating to the snowball in his hand. The girl nodded, watching as Bobby tossed the snowball between his hands. She threw her arms in front of her face as soon as she saw the snowball leave Bobby's hands. Unfortunately, this did little to help and the snowball sailed straight through the gap in her arms. The girl blinked in surprise for a few moments before the shock wore off.

"It's…cold." She stammered, touching the melting ice falling down her face. Bobby smacked himself in the forehead at the girl's response.

'She really has lost everything.' Beast thought to himself as he watched the scene from the control room. "Try again." He said, speaking into the Danger Room's microphone.

The blond nodded and turned to look at the girl, who was trying vainly to search the room for the owner of the voice. Upon giving up, she turned back to Bobby and jumped when she realized what was lying in his hand.

"Are you ready?" He asked, throwing the snowball up and down in his hand. The small girl nodded, scared. Bobby threw the snowball once more, but this time, he didn't hear the same yelp of surprise that accompanied the first time it hit her.

Instead, it was stopped by a large force field. Swirling shades of purple filled the Danger Room.

"Well," Beast murmured from the control room, turning to look at Logan, who was standing behind him. "That was a bit excessive, don't you think?" The Canadian nodded absent-mindedly, his fingers strumming the table as he thought.

Watching the girl's look of happy surprise from behind Beast, Scott turned to the woman next to him. "Emma, what were you able to get from her before you were thrown out?"

"Nothing." Emma replied. "It's impossible to get anything from a mind that's been wiped clean by a telepath. This girl here also had the misfortune of having hers erased by an extremely powerful and experienced one."

"Anything?" Scott pressed.

"Well…" Emma's brows furrowed. "Just before I was thrown out, I caught a glimpse of glowing red eyes. And, yes, before you say anything else, Summers, that was literally it."

"Well." Kitty murmured in annoyance. "That narrows it down to everyone."

"'Wonder what was so valuable in her mind that they had to erase all of it." Logan said, his voice almost a growl.

Beast fixed him with a sympathetic frown. He wasn't a telepath, but he had known Logan long enough to realize when his mind was on his past.

Logan couldn't see the look Beast had directed at him – he was too busy watching the girl in the room below giggle as she cast small forcefields between her hands.

"Psionic energy manipulation." Beast stated, as if it were the most apparent thing in the world. Logan gave him a strange look. "She's able to compress and manipulate psychic energies. It would explain the telepathy she may have displayed earlier."

"I'll try to work with her some more." Emma said, standing up.

"I'll come with you." Scott said, following Emma from the room.

"Logan?" Beast asked. His friend shook his head and turned to him. "Want to help me check missing person's reports? See if we could find the girl?" Logan nodded and left the control room with Beast close behind.

Kitty watched her team mates go, sighing at the feeling of being left behind by the 'adults' once again. She turned back to watching the girl through the glass windows of the control room observatory.

"I guess that means I'm making lunch." Forge smiled.

Kitty spun around, locking eyes with the man behind her. He shrugged in an attempt to play off his excitement at the prospect of working with the kitchen's machinery – it was the only set of equipment left in the mansion he hadn't tinkered with. The brunette rolled her eyes. "I'll make sure you don't blow anything up."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Hello again, my wonderful readers! Looks like we're on to Chapter Three, in which we finally learn the mysterious girl's name and the first of her many secrets. I hope you like it!

"Is grilled cheese the only thing you can make, Forge?" Kitty frowned, unamused. She watched nervously as Forge shined a light into the wires in the underside of the stove he had just spent the past hour or so 'working on'. Forge turned around with a hurt frown on his face, but said nothing. Kitty took this to mean 'no'.

'Note to self;' She thought with a sigh. 'Never let Forge do kitchen duty again.' She could see grilled cheese becoming highly monotonous after a few days, let alone an entire week.

Once Forge was satisfied with his work, he rubbed his hands together and smiled happily as he began to gather the necessary things for making grilled cheese sandwiches. Or at least, trying to.

"How is it that there is no bread in this entire mansion?" He cried in exasperation after minutes of fruitless searching. "Hey, Kitty, are you up for a grocery run?"

~x~

Emma nervously paced up and down the hallway outside of the room they had let the girl stay in.

"Did you get anything?" Scott asked finally. The blonde just shook her head.

"Just the same pair of eyes each time. The last time I was able to hold my own for a short while, but her mind is completely blank. Even now. I'm trying to access her thoughts, but it's like she's shielding her mind from me. It isn't her fault entirely – she's doing it subconsciously from what I can make out as fear. It seems that the girl might have some telepathic abilities as well." Emma suddenly stopped her rant, as well as her pacing. Her eyes widened and her mouth dropped open in realization. "Of course! How could I have been so dull-"

"What?" Scott shook himself out of his light stupor.

"I should be treating her as a telepath instead of a non-psionic mutant," Emma explained, as if Scott could understand her. "I should have been trying to break through her thoughts instead of trying to look through them." She stopped once more, realizing that the brunette wasn't following her. "Psionics have completely different minds than most other mutants."

Scott nodded. "Do you think it will work?"

"I can only hope."

~x~

Logan could literally feel minutes tick by as he flipped through missing persons reports. He had to have been at it for multiple hours, he reasoned. He seriously considered ripping apart all of the manila envelopes in front of him with his claws.

"I think I've got something!" Beast shouted, after what seemed like hours. Logan got up and walked over to where his friend was sitting so that he could see the file.

It was the girl. It had to be.

The photo attached to the file was of a girl barely into her teen years, smiling and waving at the camera, surrounded by many other kids around her age, though she was most certainly the focus. Although the girl in the photo had black hair instead of dark purple and brown eyes instead of violet, it was definitely the same girl that was now just upstairs. She had the same innocent smile.

"What's her name?" Logan asked, leaning closer.

Beast lifted up the photo to look at the file behind it. 'NAME: EMILY SYKES'

"And, we have a name." The blue-furred mutant smiled.

Logan didn't hear him. Instead, he was focused on the section marked 'age and date last seen'.

'AGE LAST SEEN: 12'

'DATE LAST SEEN: 12/6/2003'

"Great!" Beast said, "Let's check Cerebro's files, just in case we come up with something."

Just as the two were about to leave the room, Logan suddenly stopped.

"Emma wasn't able to get anything else as of yet. She heard that we were able to find her file and wants me to bring it up there to see if we can use it to jog her memory." Logan said after a while of looking into the air strangely.

"Of course," Beast nodded, handing him the file. "Go on. I'll be with you shortly."

~x~

"Hello again, dear," Emma said politely, walking into the guest room they had given Emily. "Would you mind if I were to try to read your mind again?"

The violet-haired girl shook her head, but a worried look crossed her face. "But…every time you try, you wind up getting hurt-"

"I'm going to try something different this time." Emma answered calmly.

Emily nodded slowly, doubtful that what ever this was would work. She then looked slightly embarrassed. "Um…I was wondering if, after this, you could stop trying to read my mind…It's kind of annoying…"

Emma blinked. The child shouldn't have sensed her looking through her mind – she made sure to be careful as not to alarm her. Much less, be able to block a powerful and well-trained telepath, such as herself and shrug it off as 'annoying'. Not unless, of course, she had was taught extensively how to use her powers by a very powerful telepath.

"We know what your name is." Emma said after getting over the surprise of Emily's last words. At this, the girl perked up. "Emily Sykes." Emily continued to look at Emma with the same expression. Her face was hard to read, but what she was able to get from her thoughts sounded happy.

"I'm going to ready your thoughts now, is that okay?" Emma asked, receiving a reply in the form of a weary nod.

Once Emma was inside again, she remembered what all of her previous complaining was about. Emily's mind was indeed completely blank.

Emma began to walk around trough the blackness, moving trough layers of nothing. All of the sudden, a she felt a force ram into her, but this time she was ready. It took all she had to stay in Emily's mind. In the physical world, her chair was pushed back several feet.

Suddenly, Emma let out a scream and slumped over the back of her chair. Emily turned on her knees and shook the unconscious telepath, trying her best to wake her.

"What happened?" Logan snarled as he burst into the room. The claws in his free hand were unsheathed. Scott was right behind him, hands at his glasses.

"She flew back, yelled, and fell asleep!" Emily cried, frantically shaking Emma. Slowly, the blonde's eyes opened.

"What just-" Emma started, then stood up suddenly, causing Emily to fall back over onto the bed. "Oh, my-" She started again, before she cut herself off.

"What?" Scott demanded.

"I was able to reach the core of her power this time." The telepath answered, her eyes wide. "It was-" She stopped, turning to Emily with an odd expression on her face.

"She may not be powerful, but her powers are versatile and she's been well trained in what to do with them." Emma explained, turning back to the men in the doorway. "Psionic energy manipulation, telepathy, telekinesis, flight. Just general psionic powers, but…"

A few moments passed in careful silence before the doors to Emily's room were thrown open once more and Beast walked in, a worried look on his face.

"The news gets worse." Beast sighed as his colleagues circled behind him to get a better look at the file in his clawed hands.

On it, there was a picture of a girl who was most certainly Emily. However, instead of the smiling, innocent face Emily seemed to normally wear, the girl's eyes were blank and cold. Her face was composed into an expressionless mask. She was clothed in a black and purple body suit, her hands resting on her hips.

Logan grabbed the picture out of the file in his hand and placed it next to the one in Beast's. There was no doubt that they both held the same girl and that that girl was now sitting on the bed in front of them. The only visible differences were the age (the Emily in the newer picture looked a couple of years older) and the hair length (the young Emily had the same layered bob as the Emily in front of them, but the older-looking one had her dark purple hair hanging pin-straight to her waist).

Emily stood up on her bed and looked over Logan's shoulder.

"That's a picture of me at my twelfth birthday party." She stated simply.

Emma turned around and stared at her, amazed.

"How did you-" She asked.

"I don't." Emily shrugged.

Logan grabbed the file from Beast and began to skim through it.

'NAME: EMILY SYKES

AGE: UNKNOWN

RACE: MUTANT

ALIAS: PSYCH

CLASS: UNKNOWN

POWERS: UNKNOW – MOST LIKELY PSIONIC

AFFILIATION(S): THE MARAUDERS

CURRENT LOCATION: UNKNOWN'

"Are you sure this information is accurate?" Logan asked. Part of him refused to believe that such a young girl could be part of such an evil criminal organization.

"I'm afraid it is." Beast replied, turning his golden eyes on a confused Emily.


End file.
